I didn’t think it was that bad, but it’s a whole new continuity from what little continuity the games had (but so is the game the new show is directly based on). I give them credit for creating a good mythos but the characters really aren’t that interesting, except for the usual ghost quartet and Pac-Man himself. Although it is kind of weird seeing a female Pinky hitting on Pac-Man.

The Funny thing is I did some checking and Pinky was ALWAYS meant to be female. Also some of the wikis indicate that Ms. Pac-Man IS Pac-Man’s wife. Apparently it’s where a woman uses Ms. and their husband’s surname.

I’ve heard this recently as well, but there was no indication of it until recently. The only ghost (monster) I knew was female was Sue from Ms. Pac-Man, who was always depicted as Pac-Man’s wife. (Although lately folks are saying she’s actually Pac-Man crossdressing. I blame Video Game Confessions.)

Yes! It’s hideous and gross! The characters bear no resemblance whatever to their arcade counterparts! Clyde looks misshapen and ugly, and is made large, whereas the real Clyde is the same size! Pinky is hot pink and is overly feminized, whereas the real Pinky is light pink and does not look either masculine or feminine! Inky is dark blue instead of cyan. And Blinky is a spirit, whereas the real guy had a fleshy leg in the second cutscene! It is worse than the old cartoon! As I said, the characters bear no resemblance to the real ones from the game! Do not watch this!

Mezmaron had no place in this cartoon, they could have easily made the ghosts the only villains but somehow they thought it was a good idea to steal a villain from what looked like a cartoon that didn’t exist yet and make him the boss instead of the one they also should not have made the ghost leader. Of course, the problem with making Sue orange is that she would have be Clyde’s sister and that might force Clyde to be the leader anyway. And then they could have made Blinky the tough guy, Pinky the athletic guy, and Inky would stay the same.

Never the less, even if they got it right this cartoon would still not be any good. And to be honest Rowdy, with or without the Pac Man cartoon I wouldn’t consider it’s existence to be the reason other video game cartoons came about. More so it was because regulations were relaxed and given what Nintendo would offer later in the 1980s a cartoon based on a video game was bound to happen eventually, Pac Man was just fortunate to be the first.

In fact, probably the one good thing about this cartoon is that Pac Man took the bullet, if you had reviewed a Galaga, Battle Zone, or Space Invaders cartoon made in the same time period you would be a lot more miserable.

To be fair, PJ and Super Pac were also added to promote spinoff Pac-Man games that were in the arcades at the time, Junior Pac-Man (which was supposed to be Pac-Man’s (other?) son and not his nephew, Super Pac-Man is just supposed to be regular Pac-Man who temporarily grows super-size with a special power pellet. (Oddly there was an episode where Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man temporarily gain superpowers to stop super-powered ghost monsters in the first season.)

I actually enjoyed the show as a kid. I’m not as bothered by animation not being what it is today since they had to pump these out so that all of the episodes would air during the season instead of having five episodes repeat so much you stop watching and miss new shows. It was still amusing to me and it’s not like the franchise had much of a story until it hit the SNES.